MODELING OF PROTEIN ADSORPTION IN A FIXED-BED - SINGLE AND 2-SOLUTE BREAKTHROUGH BEHAVIOR

Single- and two-solute adsorption breakthrough curves of lysozyme and bovine serum albumin on the cation exchanger SP-Sepharose Fast Flow we re studied in this paper. A simplified mathematical model was used to model these data. Input parameters of the model such as equilibrium an d kinetic parameters were estimated from single-solute batch experimen ts. For single-component adsorption in a fixed-bed, the breakthrough b ehaviour of lysozyme was well modelled. In contrast, significant devia tions were observed between the measured and theoretical breakthrough curves of albumin. It was shown that the equilibrium parameters measur ed from batch experiments failed to account for the behaviour of album in in the fixed-bed. The bisolute system consisting of the simultaneou s adsorption of lysozyme and albumin was also modelled using the same set of parameters derived from single-solute batch experiments. Deviat ions were observed between the measured and theoretical breakthrough c urves for both proteins, indicating that the effects of multicomponent equilibria and kinetics must be taken into consideration in parameter estimation.